The once edgy tale of teen love is watered down in 'Endless Love' remake (C)

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Quantrell D. Colbert/Universal Studios

GABRIELLA WILDE as Jade and ALEX PETTYFER as David in "Endless Love", the story of a privileged girl and a charismatic boy whose instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.

Scott Spencer’s novel of a romantic obsession so strong that it flirts with mental illness has had its sharp edges rubbed off, its dramatic weight lifted and its focus shifted in this adaptation from the director of Country Strong.

There’s nothing dangerous about this teen love on steroids. There’s no showcase sex scene, the selling point of the infamous 1981 Brooke Shields-Franco Zeffirelli adaptation. The kids here come off as perfectly reasonable; the adults are the problem, but even their efforts to separate the lovebirds are watered down.

Still, even without that tragic Romeo-Juliet edge or the hit theme song by Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross, it does have a stellar cast who keep things real even if the lighter touches turn this into a far more conventional teen romance.

Alex Pettyfer is David, the car mechanic’s son who falls hard for the gorgeous Jade, played by the supermodel-skinny Carrie co-star Gabriella Wilde.

They graduate from high school together, never having spoken. But David, he’s seen “the possibility of us.” And Jade, shut off from her peers, smothered by a family still mourning a brother who died two years before, is simply swept off her feet.

The way this story is supposed to work is that Dad’s threats and efforts to keep the kids apart works on David’s fragile, lovesick mind and makes him desperate. Pettyfer (Magic Mike) doesn’t suggest that, as this David is written as all lovesick and moon-eyed. He’s harmless. Jade is in love for the first time, but Wilde doesn’t get across the breathless yearning that raises the stakes of their affair when Daddy pulls more than a few tricks out of his bag to try and split them up.

Bruce Greenwood and Joely Richardson make a fine, discordant couple as Jade’s parents, and the young leads have a certain chemistry. If only director and co-writer Shana Feste had realized she’d stripped almost all the conflict out of the story, that you can’t flip motivations and turn everybody into “reasonable” people and have anything like an interesting drama left over.

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